Commercially available electrostatic copying machines or copiers, generally include processing apparatus for forming and developing an electrostatic latent image on a moving photoreceptor and thereafter transferring the developed image from the photoreceptor to a copy sheet made of a suitable material such as paper. Thus the copiers are provided with copy sheet handling apparatus including suitable means for supplying copy sheets, feeding the copy sheets to the processing apparatus and collecting the processed copy sheets.
The feeding means typically includes a pair of rollers spaced apart from each other and fixedly mounted on a rotatable shaft, for rotating the rollers in engagement with the top sheet of a stack of copy sheets loaded in the copy sheet supplying means.
The copy sheet supplying means typically includes a shallow receptacle, or supply tray, which is periodically replenished with a stack of copy sheets. To facilitate replenishing the supply tray it is well known in the art to lower the tray away from the feed rollers, against spring tension exerted on the tray; and, while manually holding the tray against such spring tension, to load a new stack of sheets on the tray. Whereupon the tray may be released to allow the spring to raise the tray toward the feed rollers for urging the topmost sheet into engagement with the respective feed rollers. However, in such arrangements it has been a long standing problem to evenly distribute the force, exerted by the copy sheet against the feed rollers, between the respective feed rollers. As a result of which, the feed rollers skew the copy sheets in the course of feeding the same or otherwise misfeed the copy sheets to the processing means. Accordingly:
An object of the present invention is to provide a copier including improved apparatus for handling the copy sheets;
Another object is to provide, in a copier including a pair of spaced feed rollers against which copy sheets are spring urged for feeding purposes, copy sheet handling apparatus constructed and arranged to evenly distribute the spring force between the feed roller when the copy sheets are spring urged thereagainst; and
Yet another object is to provide copy sheet handling apparatus that facilitates loading copy sheets in a copier.